


‘cause the devil’s got my arms

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: 2019 New Year's Resolution (Year of Bastille) [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-22 23:25:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19138948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: “Which makes you more human?” Alphonse asks, voice hushed against the dark. “The body or the soul?”





	‘cause the devil’s got my arms

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly got the idea after reading [this](https://calangkoh.tumblr.com/post/164989283795/conspiracy-theory-cos-al-isnt-actually-al) and started going down the rabbit hole.

It’s been five weeks since Alphonse Elric departed from Dublith, and two since Wrath spotted him in a nearby town.

He almost didn’t recognize the younger Elric at first. After all, Wrath really only knew him as a hulking suit of armor, a human soul bound to an inhuman body. The first time he saw Alphonse in his flesh body was in the aftermath of what unfolded beneath Central. That was when he was recovering from a necessary automail surgery (to replace the missing limbs, taken the same way they were from their original owner) at the Rockbell house.

But the boy he saw in that town was so vastly different from the one he chanced glimpses of in Risembool that it took a long moment before recognition hit.

The brilliant red coat was what ended up catching Wrath’s eye, and he whirled around with a snarl building in his throat, a familiar bubble of rage rising up because _he hurt Mommy_ _he killed her how **dare**  he show his face_—

But it wasn’t Edward Elric who had stopped at the produce stand to entertain a lively chat with the shopkeeper. The long ponytail was too dark, the eyes too round and the wrong color, the shape of the jawline softer, the shoulders narrower. It took several seconds of Wrath discreetly gawking before he could finally connect this striking doppelgänger with the timid boy who kept trying to peek in Wrath’s recovery room through the doorway, only to scamper off when Wrath _hissed_.

And Wrath—Wrath just _stared_ at him for what felt like _hours_.

These last two weeks, there have been glimpses here and there, fleeting flashes of a scarlet coat emblazoned with a Flamel ( _the thing that killed Sloth and Lust_ ) and the hint of a brass-colored ponytail. It’s not as though Wrath’s  _trying_  to follow the younger Elric. He could care less! They’re just... going in the same direction, is all.

At least, that’s what Wrath tells himself as he peers through the twisted branches of a mighty oak. Alphonse Elric is warming his hands before a timid fire in the middle of a forest clearing, his coat and gloves discarded and the black clothing he dons looking so entirely  _wrong_  on him.

(he does not find Alphonse Elric fascinating in any way, does not marvel at the fact this person who was willing to rip his pilfered limbs off now lacks that vehement hatred, cannot even remember it—he is not bothered by it, does not wonder to himself it the only way to rid himself of the rage that stalks his every breath is to just...  _forget_ )

As Alphonse Elric takes a thick branch he’s using as a makeshift fireiron to stoke the fire, he says, quite calmly, “I know you’re there, Wrath.”

Wrath does not nearly fall out of the tree in surprise. No. Of course not. He’s a homunculus. They are much more graceful than  _humans_.

“If you wanted to follow me,” Alphonse adds, giving the smoldering wood another experimental poke, “you should probably cover your automail.”

Growling, Wrath glares at the incriminating limbs. Of _course_. The gleaming metal chassis stands out blindingly against the deep and loamy darkness of the woods, the incongruous metal ruining his ability to dissolve into the wilderness. And if that isn’t bad enough, these were made for someone who, it seems, will never be done tormenting Wrath. Dumb Edward and his dumb limbs and his dumb face. Wrath wants to punch him.

There’s no point in hiding, not now that Alphonse knows Wrath is here. He hops down from the branches, and receives some satisfaction when Alphonse jumps a little as he lands gracefully upon his mismatched feet.

 _What didya expect?_ Wrath thinks with a sneer to those widened eyes.  _I’m not like you. My reflexes are better. You’re clumsy and weak and I don’t stay dead like you_ _._

Instead, he says, “I was  _not_  following you.”

A dubious look rises to replace the surprise. “Is that why I’ve been seeing you over the last two weeks?”

...dumb automail. Wrath would break it if he didn’t need it to walk.

There’s something else in Alphonse’s eyes, though—a glimmer, a shadow of a thought. An unspoken sentiment. A comparison made in the dark, an afterimage, an expectation that falls short because the one-time owner of these limbs no longer possesses them.

Before Wrath can be properly offended at being mistaken—not just once, but apparently  _repeatedly_ —for his enemy, Alphonse turns away. He directs his attention instead towards his suitcase (another idiosyncrasy the younger Elric has adopted of his brother, to live out of a travel-pack), opens it up and starts rummaging around it. Against his better judgement, Wrath takes a few curious steps forward, still hugging the treeline but inching forward a little to arch up on his toes for a better look. To his surprise, Alphonse emerges with a white plastic pick, one that contains what his inhumanly sensitive nose determines to be machine oil.

“Here.” Alphonse tosses it over. By virtue of Alphonse’s good aim and Wrath’s inhuman reflexes, he catches it effortlessly. “It’s some oil for your joints. I picked it up when up last week—figured you haven’t exactly been maintaining your prosthetics.”

Almost instinctively, Wrath narrows his eyes. Equivalent Exchange is an alchemist’s principle, intrinsically manipulative—if someone does something for you, you gotta do something back. And then they can make demands of you. Your body, your limbs, your servitude, your identity.

“Why?” Wrath asks.

Alphonse arches a brow. “Winry says it’s important to keep automail lubricated.”

Well, okay, Wrath _has_ been noticing the joints are a little stiff. And _maybe_ they squeak a little, here and there. And _maybe_ that must have been another thing that tipped Alphonse to the fact that he was—that he and Wrath were  _going in the same direction_.

Still. If Alphonse knows where these came from... there would be a  _reason_  he would want Wrath to maintain them.

False fingers tighten around the oil pick. He will not be made a ghost out of, not more than he already is. “What do you want?”

“To... talk to you?” Alphonse tilts his head, feigning innocence.

And Wrath is  _not_  doing this. “About  _what_?” As Alphonse opens his mouth, he adds, rather sharply, “If you don’t gimme a straight answer, I’m leavin’.”

Sure enough, the pretense is dropped, the guilelessness replaced instead by a grim line in Alphonse’s mouth and a solemn glint in his eyes. The firelight is dim, playing with the shadows across his gloom-ridden expression (features softer, less angular than his brother’s, but the basic structure and shape are the same).

“...human transmutation,” he says at last.

...huh.

Rightfully suspicious, Wrath carefully lowers himself to the forest floor. He doesn’t cross his legs or make an effort to look attentive, but he’s staying at least. Going to listen. Maybe answer, if he feels like it. Besides, Alphonse will probably just track him down, anyway—despite their differing temperaments, the Elrics share an infuriating relentlessness.

“I thought you were  _so sure_  your stupid brother’s alive,” Wrath sneers. He turns the pick over in his hands. Tries to find out how to open it. It looks like the pointy end is meant for dribbling oil...

“He  _is_.” There’s steel in the younger Elric’s voice, enough to completely replace the rest of Wrath’s limbs. Wrath tries not to roll his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

“...your mommy, then?” Experimentally, Wrath brings the pointy end to his teeth to tease it open—and ends up with a squirt of foul-tasting fluid all over his tongue. He gags, coughing, because _gross_. He’s lucky his sense of taste isn’t as inhumanly keen.

When he looks up again, Alphonse’s face has grown somber, lost a few shades of color.

“So... you  _did_  know her.” He says this slowly, carefully, stiltedly. “Or, what she  _became_ , anyway...”

Just the memory of Sloth, and her death at the hands of her creators, has pressure building in Wrath’s throat. Not a sob, but not quite a scream either, or maybe something that is an unlikely mix of both tangled hopelessly into one another.

He remembers the way her arms ensnared him, the tightness of her embrace that seemed to close off the world, made the fear thrumming so impossibly large through his body shrink when the distance between them was erased. His past self was stupid, though. He never noticed the boredom on her face, the impassiveness, the apathy—the way she was going through the motions of her own role without being as emotionally invested in it as he was. Hindsight provides a cruel and cutting clarity, because now he can recognize the flickers of what might have been annoyance, or maybe even contempt.

_“Wrath, you **fool**.”_

Her parting words still linger, the sharp cut of disgust and anger and disdain that rings in his ears even now, almost a whole year after the fact.

Because  _he_  was her undoing.  _Him_. Edward Elric may have delivered the final blow, may have chipped away at her being until even her nigh-immortality and her ability to shift seamlessly into water couldn’t protect her anymore—but it was  _Wrath’s_  actions that sealed her fate.

She would still be alive, if not for Wrath. Maybe in another country, living another life, finally free from the inborn purpose that crippled her existence as it does all homunculi. Or maybe she would have been able to translate the shadow of motherhood that hovered over her shoulders into something entirely different, put it to a use that was more within her own agency. More than he is able to do—his creation may have predated hers, but she was thrust into the world with the mentality of a capable adult, one with the capacity to look after not only herself but others as well. Him? He was thrown back into the Gate, rejected by his creator, before he could even understand what she wanted from him.

In reality, he doesn’t even know  _what_  Sloth wanted out of a human existence. He’d assumed, at the time, that she would be willing to take him with her—that they could live together in a nice house somewhere, she his mother and him her son and they would be enough for each other forever.

And he’d been wrong. And selfish, in his assumptions. Because his creator wanted him to be a child, designed him as such, created him with those immature impulses buried deep within his very being.

If anything, it gives him even more reason to  _hate_  Izumi Curtis.

( _can’t fight what’s in your blood_ )

But he’s  _not_  going to share those things with Alphonse Elric—these phantoms of guilt and pity and shame and self-loathing that haunt his subhuman heartbeat—so instead he just hunches his shoulders and tips the oil pick at his elbow. “...not really.”

Dark droplets sink into the joint. They _reek_. A human gaze loiters on him, searching the silence, but no questions are asked.

Instead, Alphonse turns his gaze over to the fire. It’s starting to die, so he takes a few twigs and tosses them into the flames. Most of it lands too far away, though. He pushes them closer with the branch-turned-fireiron.

“Teacher says that homunculi are born from incomplete human transmutations,” he says after a minute.

“Uh huh.” Wrath flexes his elbow experimentally. Even he has to grudgingly admit it’s smoother now. And doesn’t squeak anymore.

“That you don’t have souls,” Alphonse goes on cautiously.

“Yup.” Wrath moves on to his wrist, wrinkling his nose at the oil’s foul stench. It’s so _icky_. How can the Rockbells _stand_ this stuff?

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

Wrath peers at the younger Elric through the curtain of his dark hair. He says nothing.

Haltingly, and gaze still trained firmly on firelight, Alphonse continues. “The Tria Prima Theory states that a human being consists of a mind, body, and soul. But if you were just a body and a mind—you wouldn’t be able to talk, or feel, or think. You’d just exist in this state of... catatonia.”

Uh. Wrath doesn’t really know what “catatonia” means, but it sounds bad. Maybe he better not ask.

“So, homunculi  _must_  have souls,” Alphonse surmises, and the adamance in his tone makes it clear this is a conclusion he had come to some time ago, that he must have entertained for a long while before he voiced it, must have turned over in his head endlessly before he reached a satisfying verdict. “It’s the only explanation.”

Grunting, Wrath turns back to his prosthetics, giving his metal fingers some much-needed attention. “They’re not  _real_  souls, though.”

Alphonse’s gaze slides over to him, mouth pressed into a grim line. The firelight flickers in his irises, gives them an almost xanthic hue—Wrath knows, though, that in the light of day they are a greyish green-brown, a sort of misty hazel that is darker and duller than his brother’s harsh amber. “...what do you mean?”

Rather than meet those eyes—those eyes that, at the moment, look too similar to someone Wrath would be content to beat to a bloody pulp—Wrath peers upwards. Patches and swathes of midnight sky burst through the spaces between branches and leaves, the dark arms of the canopy reaching out as though to scratch the milky crescent moon with jagged fingernails. Here in some forgotten corner of the world where nature continues to reign supreme, where the only light to be found is fireflies in the summer and the watery illumination of the waning moon, the stars are crushed diamonds shining down to offer their feeble gleam as something to see by.

Ultimately useless, the stars. Pretty to look at, a gorgeous ripple of glittering silver against a liquid black sky, but not enough to offer the human eye relief from midnight’s crushing embrace.

“There was another homunculus—...Envy.” Just the name sends a shudder down Wrath’s spine as he remembers the bruises and the beatings, the way his bones splintered beneath rough blows, the feral pleasure in the elder’s eyes while Wrath cowered, helpless, at his feet. It was Envy who first awakened Wrath’s sin, those infernal crimson pebbles settling heavy in belly and allowing his decadence to awaken like a wild beast rousing from hibernation. “I don’t really get what he said, but it was kinda like... we aren’t _really_ the people we’re supposed to be. Can’t ever be. ‘Cause our creators make us how they  _remember_  us, not how we really  _were_.”

“And memories are faulty,” Alphonse clarifies, not without sympathy.

Sympathy that makes Wrath want to slam his newly lubricated steel fist into that stupid pitying face and feel his nose  _crunch_  beneath the impact.

Instead, he turns to his knee. The oil pick is half empty, now. “Pretty much. People forget stuff, or don’t remember right, or don’t see the whole picture. So we’re basically just echoes of a  _part_  of a person, not a whole person. Even  _if_  we have souls, they’re not  _complete_.”

Envy used to say that, rather than “made”, homunculi were “born”, just like humans—the circumstances were different, but those circumstances made them  _better_ , not  _less_. Strange how Wrath was not able to pick up on Sloth’s subtle disdain for him, yet he was able to notice the way Envy sneered as he said this, which brought doubt upon the whole assertion. Sometimes, when he spares the eldest homunculus a thought beyond terrified fury at that looming, leering face and the feral hatred in that gaze, Wrath wonders if Envy even believed his own rhetoric.

All this reminiscing is starting to annoy Wrath. He huffs, scowling and turning to glare at the shadowy depths of the woods. It’s practically calling him, the waiting arms of the branches and the undergrowth, more welcoming than any mother’s embrace. His first memories—the first ones beyond the Gate—came from stumbling blind into an uninhabited jungle, after all.

These stupid limbs, though, have ruined his ability to melt seamlessly into the wildness. Stupid Edward Elric, taking the closest thing to comfort he has left.

(taking, always taking, always, always,  _always_ )

He has to grab his ankle and pull it closer in order to get the last of the lubricant into the joint. “What do you even  _care_ , anyway?”

The words come out sharper than he meant them to, but he doesn’t care. He didn’t come out here with the intent to be interrogated upon his existence, have his misery poked at and prodded and set under a microscope for an  _alchemist_  to examine.

For a long time, Alphonse is quiet as the death that Wrath’s very existence defies. Only the distant rustle of the woods, seeming to beckon him back into its tenebrous fold, and the arrhythmic crackle-pop of flames eating at wood answers his biting words.

Then there is a long, drawn-out exhale, one that causes the alchemist to lean forward a little, like he wants to fall headfirst into the fire. “I was... kind of afraid you would say something like that.”

Confusion makes a dent in Wrath’s blooming annoyance. “How come?”

Though his periphery, Wrath sees Alphonse set the makeshift fireiron aside, then fold his hands over his knees. Palms flat, fingers heavenward. Wrath wonders if he even knows that he’s mimicking his elder brother, the very gesture with which alchemy sprung from fingertips and the world warped beneath his influence. Alone, with the shadows pressing in from all sides and the firelight offering a feeble reprieve, it looks almost like a desperate prayer offered to a decaying god.

“Which makes you more human?” Alphonse asks, voice hushed against the dark. “The body or the soul?”

A chill tiptoes its way down Wrath’s spine, and he squints at the younger Elric. “Huh?”

Alphonse’s eyelids flutter closed, his brows scrunching and the heel of his palms brought up to enclose the bridge of his nose as he exhales. There’s a sort of rawness in the slouch of his shoulders, a vulnerability that is better left locked away in the prison of the ribcage and inmate to the beating heart. “I mean, Brother transmuted me back to normal, from what everyone says. For years, I wasn’t in a human body. And now I  _am_ , but...”

All Wrath can do is  _stare_ , uncomprehendingly, as Alphonse’s eyes flutter open tentatively. They look milky in the dim firelight, and with a sudden jolt, Wrath now sees that his hair is awash in the ocher light as well—it looks lighter, less brown and more sunlit-golden.

“I’m missing  _years_  of my life.” Alphonse lowers his hands, raises his head. Like he expects the heavens to part and the answer to come pouring down. “This body hasn’t aged since it was lost. Say, for a second, that this is even the same body as the one that got eaten up by our transmutation all those years ago, which we don’t really know for  _sure_ —that doesn’t necessarily mean this _soul_ is the same.”

“Are you  _serious_?” There’s a tremor in Wrath’s voice, but it’s not from horror, or shock, or any sort of revelation. His words are softened instead by the silent fury that swells low in his belly, curls of black smoke rising from a rusted furnace threatening to collapse on itself.

With a helplessness that would tug at human heartstrings, Alphonse shakes his head. “I don’t _feel_ like me, without Brother here. Like, maybe it’s just because we’ve never been apart for a long time, but... I-I have these dreams and I don’t—I don’t know if they’re real or just me wishing or something  _else_. I...” He purses his lips, looking small and scared and a little lost in the darkness. “...it scares me a little, the thought that it’s something  _else_.”

Beside Alphonse, his brother’s red coat—or at least, a mimicry of it—is folded innocuously at his side, and it looks like a pool of blood in the right light. The Flamel is vaguely visible, the crown over the cross, the head of the snake, the wings that unfurl from a serpentine loop. Exactly the same.

And Wrath’s hands are  _shaking_  with the effort it takes to contain himself.

“He transmuted me,” Alphonse continues softly. His voice has dropped to a hoarse whisper, one with the threat of tears around the corner. “Back to normal, _supposedly_ , but... what if—without even _realizing_ it—w-what if the soul he transmuted wasn’t _real_ , and just it just something he unconsciously _created_? I mean, from what you said, I was _gone_ , and the dead  _don’t come back_.”

 _You think I don’t **know**  that?!_ Wrath wants to scream, but his own anger wires his mouth shut.

“S-So...” A soft, wavering tremor stalks his words and there is a shining wetness in those not-golden eyes. “What if I’m just an  _echo_  of how Ed remembered his brother, sewn into Alphonse’s body?”

The oil pick crackles as Wrath’s steel fingers enclose around it, and there is a trembling in his very  _skeleton_  as he rises to his feet. Breaths escape his lung in harsh, choppy pants that rip his throat open as they tear their way to freedom.

This, finally, snaps Alphonse out of his existentialist gloom. “Wrath...?”

And all that Wrath can do is  _scream_  before he launches himself bodily at the younger Elric.

There’s a shout of surprise and then the impact of the alchemist’s skeleton and then they are sent tumbling into the wild darkness in a flurry of screaming and shouting and roaring and indignation. Sticks snap, bushes tear, the forest groans as they defile it with their tussling, but any retribution it deals against Wrath seals itself back up with a snack-crackle of red light and only Alphonse, the unwitting culprit, comes away scathed.

They finally still with a muted thump, Alphonse flat on his back against the forest floor, his face and too-brown hair smudged darkly with loam and a long scratch cutting across his cheek, Wrath straddling his torso and effectively pinning him. Clumsy hands flail in the darkness, a vain attempt to throw off the enraged homunculus, but Alphonse is clumsy with shock and uncoordinated and he’s only human. Wrath, though, is so much more and yet so much less. It takes all of two second to seize one wrist and pin it to the ground.

It’s the other hand that gives him trouble. It escapes Wrath’s attempts to detain it and instead plants itself on his face and shoves in an attempt to throw him off. Fingers dig into one of his eyes, forcing him to squeeze it shut before it ends up stabbed, and his vision isn’t exactly helped by how long and wild his dark hair is and he’s nearly blind with it. A thumb ends up jabbed under Wrath’s upper lip. He retaliates by none-too-gently nipping it with pointed teeth, which has the alchemist yelping and retracting the offending hand.

Before the alchemist can make another attempt to attack, Wrath raises his steel fist and  _slams_  it—

—into the ground, just a breath away from Alphonse Elric’s face.

Beneath him, Alphonse goes deathly still. The cut on his face is already starting to well up and weep.

“You transmuted  _his_  soul, too!” Wrath spits around the hand in his face. All he can see is red—the red glow of the Stone lighting up as the old Alphonse, the one that _hated_ him, disappeared. The red blood that Edward Elric vomited after Envy ran his heart through with a metal spike created from his inhuman body. The red stones that course through Wrath’s artificial veins, humming with death and tragedy and despair and all the things he never asked to be. “He  _died_ , and you used _your_ life to bring  _him_  back, so how do you know the soul _you_ transmuted was the  _real_  him or just a  _memory_? Maybe _he’s_ got a false soul in him, too—maybe you’re both _fakes_  now!”

Very suddenly, Alphonse’s hand goes slack, then falls flat against the forest floor with a barely-audible thump. Wrath’s eyes are sharper than a human’s, can cut through the grey screen of shadows cast by the forest canopy and swallows them in murk. His vision carves shapes from the darkness, turns blurry figures into sharp, clean lines and eerie clarity and a world made of monochrome.

It’s because of this he can see how quick the color escapes the younger Elric’s face. How his eyes widen with a dawning horror. So with all that talk of false souls, Alphonse Elric never even considered that his own _beloved_ brother’s wouldn’t be the genuine article.

And that’s enough to make Wrath  _growl_ , enough to make him want to bring his fist down on the alchemist’s nose with time, or maybe his jaw. It makes him want to _break_ something, everything,  _anything_.

“Or, maybe the whole  _world_  is full of fake souls and _nothing’s_ real! Maybe we’re just what other people think and remember and there’s nothing of us that’s just _us_! Maybe there’s no such thing as a soul and it’s all just—just  _pointless_!”

“Wrath—”

“Or maybe you’re just  _whining_!” Wrath roars in his face. And he is shaking and panting and he can see Sloth evaporating into ethanol, see Lust dissolving into red goo, see Gluttony lose what little humanity he had left in favor of an endless, all-consuming hunger. He can see Edward Elric bleeding all over the ballroom floor, wearing all-black like the alchemist pinned beneath him. “And if you wanna whine about your identity, then _don’t dress up like someone else_!”

Maybe it is the statement itself or the way that Wrath hisses it, but the horror snaps from Alphonse’s face to be replaced by a righteous fury of his own. “I’m _allowed_ to ask these questions. I’m _allowed_ to be upset over this!”

A jagged bolt of rage carves its way though Wrath’s belly and he slams his fist into the ground again, lest he end up changing trajectory and end up smashing it into the alchemist’s skull again and again and again until there’s nothing left but a gooey red pulp and pink brains spilling out from a shattered cranium.

(it occurs to him, quite suddenly, how  _easy_  it would be to kill Alphonse right now)

It’s hard to see straight, hard to think straight, with the wild and unadulterated rage that seizes him, with the urge to bite into something and tear it open bloodily and he is an  _animal_  in almost-human form, don’t you see? He can  _never_  be a proper person. “You have a mother and a father and a brother and a _family_  and people who _give a flip_ whether you live or die! So don’t talk to me like you have a  _right_  to feel  _any_   _less human than you are_!”

Again, Alphonse’s face changes, but the wince is not from fear or rage. “I-I didn’t say...”

“And if you  _honestly_  believe that your brother’s still alive, then you won’t waste your time on all this dumbness and you’ll _keep_ _looking for him_!” He’s unhinged and screaming and there’s a  _reason_  you keep the hinges on because what’s behind them is a spinning firestorm that will tear its way though the world and leave everything in its wake crumbling into ash and he can’t be  _trusted_  to keep himself contained. “Or, you can _sit_ here and _waste_ his sacrifice by calling yourself a  _monster_  when you don’t even know what that  _means_!”

By the end of it, Wrath is panting in sharp, choppy bursts that stab him from the inside out. He doesn’t remember when he thrust his face against Alphonse’s until their noses touch, until their breaths share the same space, or when the back of his eyes started to sting hotly. All he knows is that Alphonse’s eyes fill his vision, milky pale and grey, not gold—and they stare back with no revulsion, no hatred, no disgust or disdain or contempt.

Not like his brother’s eyes, which burned scornful amber at this thief who stole his flesh. Not like Sloth’s eyes, which disregarded him in his entirety.

Alphonse’s eyes are hazel green, his hair long but more brown than blond, and his complexion is peachier than his brother’s but at least it isn’t an undead pallor. He doesn’t _have_ to be a phantom, doesn’t  _need_  to turn himself into his brother’s mirror image. Doesn’t _need_ to doubt his own identity. _He_ isn’t a poltergeist screaming against the void at the unfairness that steeps every breath and every heartbeat and every moment he continues to  _exist_.

He isn’t like Wrath at all. He has his own face, his own memories, things that are uniquely  _his_  and his  _alone_.

How he can think he is, for even  _one fraction of a second_ , less than the sum of his parts is so utterly ridiculous it’s  _infuriating_.

Alphonse Elric is whole and human and alive and it all because his brother was willing to erase himself entirely to bring his brother back from the dead.

Because Edward Elric recognized that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Because when you try, you end up with abominations caught in this halfway point between monstrosity and humanity, memories that aren’t and are, a piece of a puzzle where the puzzle has been scrapped and  _in order for anything to be gained, something of equal value must be lost_.

Then, all of a sudden, there is a hand on his cheek.

Alphonse peers up at him, something like fear in his eyes but tempered by a grim determination, something that keeps him from flinching back entirely. The touch is surprisingly tender. “Wrath, I...”

With a jolt, Wrath realizes he’s  _crying_.

Growling, he leaps to his feet. Rips himself free from the hand touching his face, turns heel sharp enough for hair to come flying in his face (stick to his wet cheeks), and stomps his way back to the clearing. In the distance, the fading light of Alphonse’s campfire casts a tentative signal through the undergrowth. Wrath knocks bushes aside with his false arm as he pursues it, remembering when in its place was warm, human flesh—real,  _human_ , warmth—and he, too, could have the world at his command as any alchemist could.

But he was just a vulture, then. Riding the connection between the Gate and a living human, a parasite. Just because the arm and leg are gone and he can’t do it anymore doesn’t mean he’s any different. He’s just a scavenger born in the scraps of an identity that never was, left roaming the graveyard for something to decompose in order to satisfy himself.

It seems so silly, now. His goal to steal the rest of Edward Elric’s body—human or not, it wouldn’t be _his_ skin. He wouldn’t be  _him_. And that’s not an existence worth having.

(sooner or later, Alphonse will realize that, too)

The clearing opens up for him, and he finds that the fire has been reduces to a few red-hot chunks of simmering charcoal. He’s about to leave it behind when he hears Alphonse’s clumsy and lumbering steps chasing after him, crunching sticks and tripping tree roots in an attempt to follow. Unlike Wrath, he is not seamless with the wilderness, is as clumsy as a proper human wandering into a world that they evolved out of, chasing after something that has not done the same.

For some reason, Wrath stops. The footsteps fall silent a moment later. He peers through the fringe of his mane to see the alchemist lingering in the treeline, practically a silhouette in the darkness.

 _Only one of us gets to be the ghost, here_ , Wrath thinks spitefully.

( _and you’re lucky enough not to remember_ , adds some foul whisper in the back of his mind that he refuses to acknowledge,  _because there’s **nothing**  I wouldn’t give to forget_)

“Wrath,” Alphonse says breathlessly.

There are leaves in Wrath’s hair, thorns and burrs and brambles, and it’s ironic that nature would welcome such a freak. “ _What_?”

“...I’m sorry.”

He looks back at Alphonse and finds something apologetic in the line of his mouth, in the knit of his brow. Some kind of plea, some kind of desperation. Something so profoundly sad. Blood traces a line down his cheek, a stark curve of darkness that ends abruptly at his jaw.

Tears are still tracing hot streaks down his monstrous cheeks and Wrath can’t find it in him to wipe them away, because he once heard someone say monsters don’t cry and this is the only thing he has to keep himself in denial.

He swallows thickly. He doesn’t care (that’s what he tells himself) about Alphonse Elric or his dumb identity crisis. “Whatever.”

“Do you...” Alphonse starts, then stops, and Wrath can see his mouth purse, see the distress carve its way across his expression, sees the lingering doubts that blur the line between  _real_  and  _false_. “Do you ever think about becoming human?”

...how is he supposed to  _answer_  that?

Of _course_ he thought about becoming human, about becoming whole and complete and  _right_. To not feel like every breath was a reminder of how he was rejected not only by the world, but by the creator who saw how ugly and deformed he truly was and gave him back to the Gate.

But he didn’t even know what that  _meant_ , back then. He thought it was having a soul, a _proper_ soul to weigh heavy on the absent black void that existed as testament to the impossibility of resurrection. That was a long time ago, it feels like. The person that wanted that isn’t what he is now.

Now, he looks at his hands—mismatched, one too pale and almost-right in the darkness, the other cold and unfeeling metal. He could replace the entirety of his abhorrent flesh with automail and still be a homunculus. He could rip a human soul free from that afterlife and attach it to his emptiness and it would just sink into this bubbling tarpit inside him. After all, those red stones he ate were just condensed human souls, and taking them into himself didn’t make him human.

The addition of a human soul won’t change anything. It’ll just add to the collection that already populates his monstrosity.

His only brush—even if only for a moment—with _true_ humanity was when he first tumbled into this cruel world (that decided his life wasn’t worth keeping in the first place) and he knew nothing. His ignorance of his true nature, of the fact that he was constructed to replace a life that was not only lost but  _never even drew a breath in the first place_ , was his own bliss. It was the closest he came to what he now aches for, and maybe it was the fact that he was able to experience it, only to have it cruelly ripped away, is what made him want it so badly in the first place. Maybe that is where his hatred stems from, because he had an almost-normal existence and then it was stolen from him by those gleaming red stones.

Maybe ignorance is the answer. Most humans are ignorant, and are content with that. Not Alphonse, obviously—but then, alchemists are never content, and they despise ignorance. It is their natural enemy.

And to be an alchemist, you needed to have a human soul. So ignorance can’t be the answer. Not really.

(even if he could get it back, there’s no way he could just  _forget_  the Gate—he isn’t as lucky as Alphonse is)

Lust—lovely, broken, tragic Lust—found humanity in the velvet-black folds of oblivion and nevermore. All things that are made by the hands of nature come to an end, including every human life that eventually succumbs to death. Nothing that lasts is truly beautiful. She looked like an angel with her wings torn out before she met her end.

If the natural world is designed die, then the _un_ natural is what persists after death.

Despite that, he’s still not entirely sure if humanity can be found in death alone, if it can be found at all. Humans leave corpses when they die. Lust just melted into a shimmering scarlet puddle at his feet. She may have died, but she died a homunculus, not a human being. Just like how even when he wasn’t aware of what he was, it didn’t change what he was.

Sometimes he wonders where she went, afterwards. If they really do have souls, like Alphonse seems to think—even false ones, created ones, echoes of pieces of people long gone—do those souls go to the same place? Is there even a place for them, or do they just return to the yawning abyss behind the Gate?

The Gate was both cradle and prison for him. It held him for most of his unnatural life. It was from there that he sprung into being, born and reborn and returned and thrown into a world that rejected him outright. The Gate was horrible, but it accepted him, at least.

Maybe all things just go back to where they start from.

(all is one, and one is all)

If only Wrath started from somewhere else.

His hands curl into fists.

“Just shut up,” Wrath spits, and then storms off into the woods. He feels hazel eyes on him long after he leaves them behind.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I saw '03 and I'm do for a rewatch, but I really like Wrath. This is my first time writing him, though, so I'm hoping I did him justice. I've always been sort of fascinated by Al and Wrath's relationship in CoS, too, so I wanted to try a stab at it.
> 
> Title comes from the lyrics of "Grip" by Bastille and Seeb (VS Other People's Heartbreak (Pt. 4)). Pray for my soul guys, 'cause the new Bastille album is coming out soon.


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